My Favourite Female Characters in Fiction

A question that always bothers me when I’m writing is whether I should concentrate on plot or character. Plot has the power to transport me, make me gasp and thrill me. But characters… Ah, they’re the people who become lifelong friends.

1) Pollyanna: Too good to be loved, but how I love her! She should be a saccharine goody two-shoes, but she’s not. Her glad game changed my world.

2) Anne: Anne in Anne of Green Gables is the best of the lot. That’s where my beloved “Carrots” emerges as the imaginative and dreamy spitfire I long to befriend.

3) Deborah Grantham: Faro’s daughter – she won my admiration the very first time around. Independent, headstrong and dignified – the woman in control of her life. What’s not to fall in love with there?

4) Darrell Rivers: No, I no longer think she is magnificent, but I cannot deny the role she played in my life as a ten-year-old. Passionate and just, Darrell somehow became a role-model, the one I would have been proud to call ‘friend’.

5) Hermione: Know-it-all. Obsessed with exams. Obsessed with studying. She reaches out to me – to the nerd inside me that enjoys the thrill of exams and the love of the library!

6) Matilda: The girl I envy. I want super-powers too! But more than that, maybe I want to have a wonderful, beautiful and fulfilling relationship with Miss Honey.

7) Scarlett O’Hara: How I hate her! But there’s reluctant admiration for her single-minded determination. Scarlett, Scarlett – what a girl of the world she is.